The Icarus Project
by NushiKasai
Summary: "Your wings will burn." Sakura Haruno is targeted by an alarmingly personal computer virus, and help comes from the most unlikely of sources. When she heard the term 'computer nerd', Sasuke Uchiha was not the first image that came to mind. SasuSakuSaso


_Icarus, Icarus, do not stray,_

_Stay close to me now, Icarus, my child,_

_Our path is to follow the light of day,_

_For far from my side, the world is wild,_

_Stay close to me now, Icarus, my child,_

_Icarus, Icarus, your feathers are glass,_

_For far from my side, the world is wild,_

_The sun is so cruel, its heat so harsh._

* * *

**_"__Congratulations! You have been selected as a random winner of the monthly prize! Please wait to be redirected.__"_**

The message flashed brightly in the middle of the computer screen; the neon flaring lights acting as a border almost disorienting to the eye.

"No, thank you," the girl in front of the screen scowled as she tried to exit the message. Infuriatingly, it wouldn't let her do that, and so she rolled her eyes in irritation before moving her arrow up to the tab and clicking out of it. There was a second's delay, but the tab disappeared in an instant.

Sakura sat back in her chair and waited for a few moments, just to make sure that the ad was fully gone before she reopened her window. It wouldn't be much of issue, she knew from experience. Now that the main ad had been dealt with, she was free to return to her browsing.

And homework.

Most definitely homework.

The papers beside her shifted as her hands swept over them; searching for the one sheet she needed for the current assignment.

"Okay, Physics," the girl muttered glaring at the paper before her and willing it to either yield its secrets or vanish. "Do your magic."

Assignment due the next day, and social media was calling to her. She could scrape through- she always had- with cramming everything important in the last five minutes before a deadline ends. It wasn't going to hurt her if she just...procrastinated.

She logged into her online chat, and smiled as she saw multiple friends online. It seemed that she wasn't the only one distracting themselves from what they should have really been doing.

Call it a team effort, she supposed.

**illegally-blonde: hey, you were blaming me for wasting time!**

The message popped up on her screen from one of her close school-friends, and the girl rolled her eyes. She could always count on Ino for being the first to catch

**paintmepink: i haven't moved from my seat since lunch thanks to physics.**

**illegally-blonde: sucks to be you. i'm stuck with bio.**

Sakura frowned at that, recalling that Ino had a lab partner that would be _more _than happy to help her out in Biology- whilst he was remarkably lazy in basically everything that he did, he couldn't risk his partner failing bio.

**paintmepink: Get shikamaru to lend you his notes. you fail and he looks bad.**

**illegally-blonde: yeah, but i told him that i could cope on my own. it'd make me look really stupid now if i went crying for help.**

**paintmepink: ...**

**paintmepink: i'll give you my bio notes tomorrow.**

**illegally-blonde: i love you.**

Sakura smiled wryly at the screen, and reached into the draw beside her desk. Her hand rummaged around for a while; sifting through the multiple books and folders she'd placed inside the draw, before she latched onto the sheets she was looking for.

She sat them beside her laptop, and quickly attached them together with a paper clip. As she did so, she heard the telltale beep that signified she had another message.

**illegally-blonde: what about you? you're obsessed with marks. why are you struggling?**

**paintmepink: teacher is a dbag. and a creep.**

**illegally-blonde: fun. you can copy my gravitational.p energy to kinetic report if you want?**

Sakura breathed a sigh of relief, and let some of the tension fall from her shoulders. Really, even though Ino could be a pain in the ass sometimes, she was a good friend.

**paintmepink: thanks! i didn't understand it at all. and yakushi wants it tomorrow. can't wait until mid year.**

Mid year was a time where the subjects a student had chosen were open for changing. Sakura basically had her physics table cleaned and her books poised above the trash can.

**illegally-blonde: what'll you take instead?**

**paintmepink: i'm thinking art.**

Sakura was shocked that she had even thought of art; considering that the best she could expressively draw was a stickman. If she was feeling particularly good, then she could accomplish a stickman waving his left hand.

She could draw quite good diagrams of the human anatomy, but only for medical purposes; never actually to express her feelings. From what she understood, that was what art was all about.

**paintmepink: people say art's a bludge. if i got through physics doing nothing, i can get through art.**

**illegally-blonde: the teacher's cute, though. you'll have fun.**

**paintmepink: ...**

**paintmepink: he looks a little like you.**

**illegally-blonde: excuse me, i do not look like a man. i am a woman. if anything, he looks like a woman.**

Sakura grinned to herself at her friend's defensive reply, and began typing away her answer. She glanced up to make sure that she was hitting the right keys for her words, but frowned when she noticed something happened with her screen.

The letters were coming at a delay; she would be five words ahead of the screen at her current pace. The girl rolled her eyes at her laptop's incapability, before taking her fingers away from the keyboard and waited for the screen to catch up.

There was almost a weird sensation about seeing the words of her creation being written at a slower, delayed pace. It was like an out-of-body sort of experience; watching your own thoughts being played out before you.

Finally, after a few seconds, the screen caught up.

**paintmepink: he's kind of weird.**

**illegally-blonde: something wrong? you took a while.**

Sakura had to wait for probably a few more minutes until the screen ended up cooperating with her. As she typed her response, she scowled and had to smack the edges of her laptop a few times because she hoped that it would spur it to work faster.

**paintmepink: gotta go. laptop is lagging.**

She logged off, but didn't bother to shut down. There was no need; she didn't want to have to wait for it to load up the next morning.

That was just annoying.

* * *

The next morning, her internet homepage had changed.

She'd been sure to wake up at six, in order to check everything she needed to (because most of her online, around-the-world friends were most active during her sleep) and had immediately logged in. Clicking on the internet, she had expected her normal, chrome homepage to come up, but what arrived instead made her stop and blink.

Physical Science?

Her eyes creased, and Sakura remembered the conversation that she had had with Ino the night before regarding her lack of understanding in the physics area. She frowned, and wondered whether it was another one of those ads being configured to what she mentions. Once, she remembered typing in the name of an upcoming movie to her friends, and for the next few months all of her ads had been somehow related to that one movie that she had mentioned.

Maybe it was something like that.

But still, it was kind of weird.

She typed in her social media website, and thankfully the page redirected without issue. Good, that meant she didn't have anything particularly irritating on her computer. She'd had a few viruses before, and some were particularly unpleasant.

But this was obviously nothing to be worried about. Still, it wouldn't hurt to have someone look at her laptop after school.

**usernameofmine: it's probably not too healthy to be up this early.**

Sakura's eyes raised as she saw that Shikamaru- Ino's lab partner- was online and talking to her. She shrugged at his words, and quickly typed her response.

**paintmepink: you can't talk. how long have you been up?**

**usernameofmine: ...**

**usernameofmine: a few hours.**

Sakura rolled her eyes at his behaviour. He was quite famously known as a prodigy around the town, but he was ironically also the laziest man that Sakura had ever met. Even his username showed that he couldn't be bothered.

**paintmepink: see? i told you.**

**usernameofmine: troublesome.**

**paintmepink: speaking of troublesome, Ino won't admit it, but she isn't flashy with bio right now. could you help her out...subtly?**

**usernameofmine: she said she could cope.**

**paintmepink: she's Ino. she can cope with many things. according to her, bio is not one of them.**

**usernameofmine: hmm. i'll see what i can do.**

Sakura smiled at his words, but knew that Shikamaru would help out her blonde friend regardless. He had developed quite a soft spot for Ino over the years, she knew, but he would never admit it.

**usernameofmine: why are you awake so early anyway?**

**paintmepink: checking stuff. something weird happened to my internet homepage, though. it changed to something else.**

**usernameofmine: you probably picked something up from a website. be careful with that.**

**paintmepink: i'll get it checked out tonight after school. it'll be fine for now; it just seems to be a homepage thing.**

**usernameofmine: that could lead to bigger things though, if you leave if it alone. the very fact that your homepage has changed already means that something is inside your computer that shouldn't be.**

Sakura's eyes widened slightly after reading that, and thought back to the homepage and what it had been changed to. She'd been talking about physics the night before, and that was what the homepage had been related to. Maybe Shikamaru was right; she probably had picked it up from somewhere.

It was good that she was going to get rid of it.

**paintmepink: yeah, i'll get rid of it later. viruses are annoying.**

**usernameofmine: it's best to only use your computer if you need to today. disconnect from the internet, etc. sometimes innocent looking things can cause identity theft.**

**paintmepink: got it. thanks, shikamaru!**

**username: hmm. troublesome.**

_paintmepink has logged off._

* * *

"...the idea is that when you stand on the ground, you are pushing against it," the voice was almost sickly sweet, and despite the good-intentions everyone knew that he had, Kabuto Yakushi still creeped the hell out of Sakura. She had her chin placed against the palm of her hand as she leaned against her table in exhaustion.

This was one lesson that she could not wait until the end of.

"But, effectively," the teacher adjusted his glasses in the middle of his sentence, almost to stress the importance of his words, "the earth is pushing back against you."

Despite how well she was trying to ignore him, his sentence still managed to confuse her- and it wasn't from her lack of listening. She didn't want to speak up, however, otherwise he would corner her in front of the entire class. And if he did that, than she might end up saying that she would eventually regret. She certainly wasn't the most tempered of women, and in irritating situations, that part of her personality would shine through.

She just needed to be quiet, and bide her time. Soon, mid year exams would be occurring. She just needed to flunk her physics, and then she'd be out.

"Sakura Haruno?"

Her eyes widened as she was snapped out of her thoughts by the current source of her contempt. Yakushi was pointing to a question on the board, and had an expectant, yet deceivingly kind smile that made her want to slap it off of his lips.

But right now, that wouldn't be very smart.

"I-I'm sorry, sir," Sakura ground out, and was pleasantly surprised with how civil her voice actually sounded despite her true feelings. There was no need to bother with deceit; Kabuto Yakushi knew quite well what she thought of him. "I don't understand."

Of course, he already knew that. He just wanted to hear her say it. It was a bit of a routine for him.

The bell rang; saving Sakura from whatever words her teacher was about to say, and the entire scrambled to pick up their belongings and make for the door. She was the fastest of them all; and whilst her pencil case was undone and everyone could probably see the heart-shaped picture of Ino and herself as young children hanging out the side of her case, she didn't mind.

She stepped out into the corridor, and swiftly made her escape.

Physics might have been a good subject for her if she'd had a better teacher. But when she didn't like someone, she would stick to that until they did something to prove her wrong, and Kabuto Yakushi was yet to do any such thing.

"Hey, forehead!" The call came to her from the direction she was headed in, and the name made her flinch, but it was more unconsciously reactive. It didn't cut her like it used to. "Get over here!"

Ino was standing on top of the table- showing as much impeccable class as ever- and waving with both arms over her head in the exuberant way she tended to do things. Her long blonde hair practically shimmered in the sunlight behind, and Sakura felt a rare pang of envy when she compared her friend's beauty to her own shabby, short pink hair that everyone assumed was a bad dye job.

"Hey, pig," Sakura placed her stuff down onto the table in front of her, and hurriedly began to shove them back into her bag. Then, she greeted the others seated at the table with a smile and a nod.

Ino, still standing on the table, leaned down and examined her with beady eyes in a way that only Ino could do.

"You look terrible," she remarked, showing her extremely sensitive behaviour, and Sakura resisted the urge to flinch again. Satisfied, Ino leaned back and straightened up; placing her hands on her hips as she went. "You just had physics with Yakushi."

This time, Sakura _did _flinch.

There was a collective groan around the table- especially from their friend Tenten, who also shared a dislike of the man- and she was shot sympathetic glances. Nobody really wanted to be in Yakushi's class; he was known to be quite a creepy man, and maintained the reputation rather well.

"It was horrible," Sakura sighed, before sitting down and running a hand through her hair. She reached down to her bag, and quickly brought out her laptop- intending to print out her report. "I'm glad it's over."

There was a pat on her back, and she looked beside her to see Rock Lee- a rather...interesting friend of hers- giving her a determined yet supportive stare.

"Fear not, kind Sakura," he told her, in an over-enthusiastic voice that somehow managed to suit him regardless of how ridiculous it was, "Together, we will overcome the enemy with the power of youth!"

She had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, but she understood that it was an attempt to make her feel better. She shot him a thankful smile, and removed his arm from her back.

"It's fine, Lee," Sakura replied, before looking down at her laptop and tapping in her password quickly, "I'll just wait until mid years."

Ino opened her mouth to say something- probably to insult Kabuto and make Sakura laugh- but the pink-haired girl's attention swiftly was taken away from her friends as her homepage loaded.

If her internet homepage was anything to worry about, then this was much worse.

"Sakura?" Ino noticed her expression, and knelt down to her level and peered at her curiously. "What's the matter?"

There was a moment of silence, in which the girl was staring at her home screen and the group of friends were watching her expectantly. Finally, she raised her eyes, and they were wide with confusion.

"My homepage," she muttered, leaning back and allowing the others to look at it. "It's...changed."

Ino frowned, and jumped off of the table, before making her way over to the screen in order to look at it. She peered over the top of her friend's shoulder, and examined the homepage.

She knew Sakura; she was the type to keep the homepage normal unless she needed to change it. It was embarrassing for others to see a homepage if it was stupid, and the pink-haired girl wasn't the type to risk it if she didn't need to.

But now, there was something rather odd.

For on the homepage, there was a picture of a pair of white, clandestine wings largely outstretched towards the sun in the background.

Underneath, there was a line of text:

_**Icarus, do not stray.**_

* * *

_Icarus, Icarus, your feathers are glass,_

_Higher in the air, fly further 'till you learn,_

_The sun is so cruel, its heat so harsh,_

_The wax will fall. Your feathers will burn._

_Higher in the air, fly further 'till you learn_

_Our path is to follow the light of day,_

_The wax will fall. Your feathers will burn._

_Icarus, Icarus, do not stray._

* * *

**Thanks for reading! Please review and tell me what you think! This chapter is kind of short, but it's meant to be a prologue of sorts. **

**This is inspired from 'Instant Message' by Keelah, so please check her work out! **

**Disclaimer: I don't and never will own Naruto.**

**Please review! **


End file.
